NASA announces Bezos’ Blue Origin will build a lunar lander

The contract is a milestone for Bezos’s space company after it lost an earlier lunar landing bid to competitor SpaceX.

The federal space agency of the United States, NASA, has selected by jeff bezos Blue Origin company to build a spacecraft that will send astronauts to and from the surface of the moon, winning a contract valued at about $3.4 billion.

in a Press release on Friday, NASA said that the company it would design, test and develop a “lander” under the Artemis program, the agency’s lunar exploration initiative.

“Today we are pleased to announce that Blue Origin will build a human landing system as NASA’s second supplier to fly the Artemis astronauts to the lunar surface,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in the statement.

“We are in a golden age of human spaceflight, made possible by NASA’s international and commercial partnerships. Together, we are making an investment in the infrastructure that will pave the way for the first astronauts to reach Mars.”

The contract requires Blue Origin to offer a demonstration of an unmanned mission to the moon, followed by a manned voyage that would take astronauts to the lunar surface, scheduled for 2029.

we select @OrigenAzul develop the human landing system for the #Sagebrush V mission. This deep space transportation component will help us in our goal of sending astronauts to the surface of the Moon and safely returning them home: https://t.co/KMq5fUn0ll pic.twitter.com/mpfUjWr6OX

—NASA (@NASA) May 19, 2023

The announcement came as a handful of private companies, including Elon Musk’s space x and Bezos’ Blue Origin, pushed for a bigger role in space activities and compete for lucrative government contracts.

In April 2021NASA awarded SpaceX a $2.89 billion contract to develop a human landing system that would carry two astronauts to the moon’s surface under the Artemis program.

Blue Origin had been outbid for previous contracts, and Friday’s announcement represented a key milestone for the company.

blue origin will build a 52-foot (16-meter)-tall lander in coordination with defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Boeing, as well as spacecraft software company Draper and robotics company Astrobotic. Those companies lost out to SpaceX in its 2021 bid, which Blue Origin tried unsuccessfully to overturn in court.

“It’s an honor to be on this journey with @NASA to get astronauts to the Moon, this time to stay,” Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.com, said in a Twitter post following the announcement.